


Like swimming

by cosmia



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmia/pseuds/cosmia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in episode 2x06, just as Tony is getting his confidence back and Cassie is dealing with the loss of Sid to Michelle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like swimming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [three_things_sid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/three_things_sid/gifts).



“How could you not have known Sid’s an idiot?” Tony asked her teasingly, opening the conversation when he found Cassie outside the club, sitting on a cheap metal bench. The music coming from inside was pushing at the walls behind them. He sat himself down next to her and made himself comfortable. 

“Tony, Tony,” she said, patting him on the knee. “You don’t owe me anything. Sure, your ex is fucking mine, but it’s not your responsibility to make me feel better. Why don’t you go back inside?” 

“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth. “I felt like coming out here. Fresh air and all that. Feels good!” Once he said this, Cassie pulled out a cigarette and lit it. As she inhaled, Tony laughed. “Never mind, then.” They both sat and watched people stumble out the back door, for they were both the kind of person who could sit in silence and not find it awkward or feel the need to fight it. 

When a very drunk man staggered by, a balloon tied to his wrist, Cassie started laughed a few harsh ‘ha’s. She took one more drag on her cigarette and then dropped it to the ground, putting it out. 

“You still using those to keep yourself from getting hungry?”

Cassie straightened her blouse and crossed her legs. “What does it matter?” 

Without warning, Tony snatched up her wrist and held it to his. He held it up flat against his and motioned to the difference in size. Cassie pulled her hand back and held it in her lap like a wounded bird. “I know, but no matter how small I get, I will always be too big. There will always be too much skin and bone to look after, too much to account for, too much to worry about.” 

Tony looked confused. “I never thought of bodies as responsibilities. Not in that sense.”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, her eyes unblinking. She was looking straight at him, her gaze urgent as if she could stare her truth into him. “It’s not thin I want. It’s small. Manageable. That’s it!” This word excited her, and she smiled to herself, finally taking her hand out of her other hand and relaxing a little.  

Tony looked at her. “I find you strange” was all he said.

Cassie smirked, leaning her neck back slightly and pulling her hair to one side. “I know.” 

After a silence: “Don’t you find me strange?” 

“Maybe.”

“You know I am. That’s why I’m here. Sid’s not here, and it’s because he’s not strange. He’s a normal old human being.” Tony’s eyes whisked from left to right as he gathered more thoughts, but when he looked at Cassie who had her sad, earnest eyes focused on him, he refrained from voicing them. Instead he said in his best persuasive voice, “Come on. I’m strange.” 

“I’ll have to think about it,” Cassie teased. She shivered and reached down to the ground to pick up the jacket she had brought with her. As she wrapped it around her shoulders, she said, “Tony?” He raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘go on’. “How are you? After the accident, how have you been? I know we haven’t really talked.”

“I had to relearn how to write my name,” he said bluntly, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did. 

“Wow, Tony. That’s awful.” 

“It’s good to relearn the basics, though. Every once in a while. Even if some of ‘the basics’ are your name, and writing it. We forget the small things, and as we forget, we get lost, because the small, basic things are what everything else is built upon.”

Cassie smiled at him. She couldn’t help it; she liked this version of Tony. “You’ve had a lot of time to think.”

“I had to think so that I could get back to doing things naturally. I think so I won’t have to when it comes to _doing_. I think to not think.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe not.” 

“Why were you even attracted to Sid in the first place?” Tony said, swiftly changing the subject.

“Sid? Oh, because.”

“The fact that he salivates every time Michelle walks by wasn’t ever a turn off?”

“I thought he cared about me,” Cassie said simply. 

Tony lowered his posture and crossed his arms. “Sid does care about you. He’s just too much of an immature wanker to understand, well, anything.” 

“I’m going to tell you something,” Cassie said timidly. “I’m going to tell you that when I get the idea in my head that somebody might love me, I get used to it. It’s like…” she tilted her head to once side, gazing at no thing but rather the spaces between things. “It’s like I’m swimming. And when I wake up, when it’s proved to be false, it’s like I’m stepping out of that pool, and there’s no towel in sight and it’s suddenly cold and blustery and I’m forced to wander, looking for something, _anything_ to make me warm again.” She let out a loud, high little strip of breath as if saying all of this had exhausted her, and maybe it had. 

“And it’s not just…I’m not just talking about feeling loved. Just feeling good in general. Feeling good always seems to be this inevitably temporary thing for me.”

“Maybe you should get a snorkel.”

“A what?” Cassie said, caught off guard.

“You know, those things people put in their mouths that connects to a tube that sticks out of the water so that they can breathe. That way, you won’t have to stop your swimming.” Cassie raised her eyebrows and laughed. “I’m serious! Snorkel. 

“Either that or you can make sure to set out some towels before you dive in next. Personally, I think that’s the best solution, because, as it is, you can’t swim all of the time. You can’t. So control your circumstances.” He shrugged. “That’s all I have to offer, Cass, but it worked for me.” 

Cassie’s smiling cheeks smushed her eyes into little almonds. Her laugh was like birth. “I’ll try, Tony.”


End file.
